WELCOME TO THE RUSSIAN CLASS!

There are a lot of reasons to be excited about learning the Russian language, and I hope in your time in my classroom you will see why. Whatever your objective is, foreign language will enrich your inner world, make you look at yourself in another way. We are learning Russian through games, dance, music. You will start speaking in Russian form the first lesson!

Why do you need to study Russian?

104 institutions in the USA offering Russian Language.

Example

Florida National University, Career College of Northern Nevada, University of Arizona. Arizona State University-Tempe, Arizona State University- Tucson, Mesa Community College. University of Kentucky, University of Oregon, Phoenix College, University of Kentucky, George Washington University.

The US Government needs more Russian-language specialists.

Speak Russian to engage in the Russian economy.

Russian is an important language for science and technology.

Russian is spoken by hundreds of millions of people: The Russian Federation spans nine time zones and covers about 1/8th of the world's land surface. It is the largest country in the world, almost twice the size of the United States. Russia has a population of almost 150 million people, which constitutes slightly more than 50% of the population of the former Soviet Union. There are around 270 million Russian speakers in the world.

Learn about one of the world's most fascinating cultures.

Russian combines well with many other disciplines: business and Russian, science and Russian, political science or history and Russian, English, and Russian, another foreign language and Russian, engineering, and Russian, mathematics and Russian, music and Russian. Russian provides you with opportunities your non-Russian studying classmates do not have. For instance, a student majoring in biology and Russian can go to Russia to study abroad and work with Russian biologists in a laboratory in Russia, get a fellowship to study freshwater ecology in Lake Baikal and Lake Tahoe, and then go on to medical school.

Studying Russian helps you enter post-graduate programs: Students who study Russian have a high rate of acceptance for graduate study in law school, business school, medical school, and other professional programs.

Students of Russian go on to great careers. Former students of Russian are now working or have worked: as engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center, at banks operating in international markets, in the Peace Corps, in major accounting firms (in Russia and in the US), in large and small law firms, in press offices in Russia, Europe and America, in the State Department and Commerce Department of the federal government, teaching English in Russian high schools, for non-profit agencies such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the National Foreign Language Center, or the US-Russia Business Council.

I hope to make my class as welcoming and comfortable as possible, so that we can engage in meaningful discussions and through sharing our ideas and understandings, not only learn the curriculum, but create the kind of community which fosters your growth and development.